Why should a foolish marriage vow

1631 –

1700

Why should a foolish marriage vow, 
  Which long ago was made,
Oblige us to each other now
  When passion is decay'd?
We loved, and we loved, as long as we could,
  Till our love was loved out in us both:
But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled:
  'Twas pleasure first made it an oath.

If I have pleasures for a friend,
  And farther love in store,
What wrong has he whose joys did end,
  And who could give no more?
'Tis a madness that he should be jealous of me,
Or that I should bar him of another:
For all we can gain is to give our selves pain,
When neither can hinder the other.

This poem is in the public domain.

Astraea Redux

A Poem on the Happy Restoration and Return of His Second Majesty Charles II., 1660.

Now with a general peace the world was blest,
While ours, a world divided from the rest,
A dreadful quiet felt, and worser far
Than arms, a sullen interval of war:
Thus when black clouds draw down the labouring skies,
Ere yet abroad the winged thunder flies,
An horrid stillness first invades the ear,
And in that silence we the tempest fear.
The ambitious Swede, like restless billows tost,
On this hand gaining what on that he lost,
Though in his life he blood and ruin breathed,
To his now guideles

John Dryden

1660

Aureng-Zebe, Prologue

Our author, by experience, finds it true,
'Tis much more hard to please himself than you;
And out of no feign'd modesty, this day
Damns his laborious trifle of a play;
Not that it's worse than what before he writ,
But he has now another taste of wit;
And, to confess a truth, though out of time,
Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme.
Passion's too fierce to be in fetters bound,
And nature flies him like enchanted ground:
What verse can do, he has perform'd in this,
Which he presumes the most correct of his;
But spite of all his pride, a secret shame
Invades his breast at Shakspea

John Dryden

1675

A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,   
      This universal frame began:   
  When nature underneath a heap   
      Of jarring atoms lay,   
    And could not heave her head, 
The tuneful voice was heard from high,   
    ‘Arise, ye more than dead!’   
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,   
  In order to their stations leap,   
     And Music’s power obey. 
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,   
   This universal frame began:   
   From harmony to harmony   
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,   
The diapason closing full in Man.

John Dryden

1687

Poems

Why should a foolish marriage vow

More by this poet

Astraea Redux

Aureng-Zebe, Prologue

A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day

Poems

Page submenu block

Why should a foolish marriage vow

More by this poet

Astraea Redux

Aureng-Zebe, Prologue

A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day

Newsletter Sign Up